


Six Times Jim Protected His Crew and One Time they Protected Him.

by lilsmartass



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Action, Drama, Five And One, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, protective crew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-19
Updated: 2012-09-19
Packaged: 2017-11-14 15:27:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/516822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilsmartass/pseuds/lilsmartass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six time Jom protected his crew and one time they protected him. Just what it says on the tin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Six Times Jim Protected His Crew and One Time they Protected Him.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Dear God! It’s another one!
> 
> Disclaimer: Not mine. Obviously.
> 
> Genre: Gen, angst, humour, drama...it’s ait of everything really, it’s a 6 and 1 for pity’s sake.
> 
> Rating/Warnings: PG13 for Jim’s potty mouth. He just would not stop swearing. Or blaspheming. No real warnings. Part three might come off as a little bit dub-con-y if that is the way you think, but it wasn’t really intended that way and mild suggestion of violence in some places. Also blackmail!

 

**1)** **Sulu**

**_Crash Landing_ **

 

The crash really wasn’t Sulu’s fault. Jim knows that, even as he swears furiously, picking through the wreck of the _Galileo’s_ main compartment, where he’s been thrown by the impact, and back to the co-pilot’s seat. Sulu’s a better pilot than even he is and he’s no slouch himself, it takes skill to make a dead ship crash and not burn up in atmosphere. He wipes a hand across his mouth, noticing the stain of blood on his sleeve and swipes his tongue carefully around his mouth, no missing teeth. In that case he’s fine.

 

“Sulu? You alright?” he asks, reaching the cockpit through the debris at last,

 

There is no answer; it’s more forbidding than the flashing warning lights telling him they’re venting power.

 

“Sulu?” he asks again, bending over the form he had thought, in the dim smoky interior, was hunched over the controls, but he can now tell is unconscious. “Hikaru?” he tries, shaking him lightly and when that doesn’t work he snaps, “Lieutenant Sulu, report.”

 

Nothing.

 

He flips Sulu gently out of the seat, laying him prone on the deck. He’s bleeding from a head wound but it looks shallow. He’s unconscious but Jim can find nothing else wrong with him.

He drops into the vacated pilot’s seat, none of the sensors are working, but they had been heading for an M-class planet and they’re losing atmosphere so quickly that they can’t wait in here. They’ll suffocate. If the atmosphere turns out not to be breathable outside they’ll just die quicker.

 

James T. Kirk, Captain, takes a deep breath and does what he does best. He gambles and punches the override to open the doors.

 

The shuttle is immediately filled with fresh air and sunshine and Jim drags Sulu out into it. He is as careful as possible in case of internal injuries, but there’s nothing he can do in the shuttle.

 

In the light he checks Sulu over again, but he can still find nothing so he leaves his downed crew member in the recovery position and goes back into the _Galileo_ to see what supplies they have. Not many, turns out to be the answer. The emergency first aid kit is wrecked, a bottle of something liquid and gelatinous having burst inside it. The hypo will still work, but the bandages and more sensitive electronic devices are damaged beyond repair. The emergency ration bars have survived so at least he and Sulu will be able to keep one another’s morale up by bitching about having to eat the things, but the water storage container was punctured by some debris and they have, perhaps, half a litre.

 

Jim hopes his crew really is as good as he keeps telling everyone they are and that they find them quickly.

 

They are good. With six M-class planets to search it takes they only four days to find their Captain and the downed shuttle. Bones’ anger is something to behold when he finds out the state Jim is in though, which is saying something considering Sulu only holds consciousness sporadically and his lucidity is even rarer and that has been the case for four days.

 

Dehydration is the most severe of Jim’s symptoms, having pushed all the water on Sulu who was too delirious to consider what his Captain was doing and had simply drank what was given. How he’s still even conscious amazes McCoy and is a testament to the Captain’s strength. The first signs of malnutrition have set in, as Sulu has been given preference in choosing the least revolting ration bars and has managed to eat every one that Jim’s not allergic too. The Lieutenant will feel guilty about that for years, but right now, that’s the least of McCoy’s worries.

 

During his debriefing with Spock, the Vulcan asks why Jim never chose to venture further afield from the shuttle with an emergency beacon. The planet was habitable; they’d likely have found more water and possibly even food.

 

“I didn’t want to leave Sulu. He’d have been at the mercy of anything that walked by, or he could have wandered off, he was delirious some of the time.”

 

“But you could both have died.”

 

“Yeah...but I knew I could keep him alive if I was there. And I trusted you to find us.”

 

Spock bows his head, uncertain as to what to think. He settles for being relieved Misters Scott and Chekov were able to modify the sensors to search for the alloy which made up the shuttle when they did. If they hadn’t, his protectiveness of his crew would have likely killed the young Captain.

****

**2)** **Chekov**

**_When diplomacy goes wrong_ **

****

Diplomacy never seems to go the way you imagine it. Especially if your name is Captain James T. Kirk. This latest attempt has gone, through no fault of Jim’s epically and spectacularly wrong and now there’s running and screaming and dying. He’d _told_ Starfleet just from reading the briefing that these people weren’t ready for Federation membership and now look, stuck on a planet with terrorists fear-mongering about an alien invasion and setting off bombs.

 

Spock had at least managed to beam the rest of the away team back, probably with Scotty’s help and with McCoy’s swearing ringing in his pointed ears, but something in these bombs is doing something funny to the atmosphere and now he can’t even contact the ship so he and Chekov are stuck here.

 

In the end, it is almost a relief to be captured and out of the carnage and mayhem of the outside. They are locked hastily in what appears to be a storage room, in the very building where they had been negotiating with the former government and left.

 

Chekov is pale and shaking. He’s not bleeding, at least not obviously, but the kid’s brave so Jim knows something is wrong. And damn it his back hurts from the exploding window he’d shielded Chekov from with his own body. He hadn’t actually been expecting to walk away from that, but the blast made sure he was hit with knife sharp sand instead of any actually stabbing size slices.

 

“You OK?”

 

“Yes, Keyptin. Yes, I am...” the boy pauses, seventeen and unwilling to lie to a superior officer, “I am still functioning.”

 

“You spend too much time with Spock,” Jim grouses but doesn’t press him. It’s not like there’s anything he can do anyway.

 

An indeterminate amount of time later, one of the aliens comes to the room. Jim is already standing, pacing, a caged lion. Chekov, having long since succumbed, at least somewhat, to whatever his injury might be and is sitting, curled in on himself against the back wall. He is noticeably favouring his left side and Jim is praying for a timely intervention that will put his navigator somewhere in the region of Bones and a hypospray.

 

So when the door opens, he’s spitting angry. Three aliens, dressed in the uniform of the terrorists are blocking the door, and the shadows suggest there are even more behind them so fighting isn’t an option, or not a good one and Jim has learned to pick his battles. He doesn’t even get a chance to start talking either, any sentence he might have begun being steamrollered over with the rumbling tones of the one holding the key. “Which of you is the Clever-cub?”

 

Jim pauses for a second to process that sentence, remembering in a series of snapshot style flashes how taken these people had been with Chekov’s youth and brilliance. He eyes their snout like faces and the thick fur on their arms and torsos, more like bears than what his human perception thinks of as people.

 

“We require his assistance.”

 

Jim takes a deep breath, and steps into his role, just like Mrs. Macreedy’s acting classes back in Iowa when he was nine and bored one summer. “Zat...zat is me,” he says, doing his best to imitate Chekov’s accent as that’s easily his most distinguishing feature and trying to wilt into himself a little and appear younger and less furious than he is. “Please, my Kyptin is injured. We must speak with our ship.”

 

He is grateful his shirt is torn and he is no longer wearing Captain’s bands on his wrists, but still, he keeps his head down as he is dragged along with his sizeable, and very _very_ armed, entourage in case one of their earlier hosts should recognise his face and inadvertently address him. He keeps an eye on each and every turn, noticing exits and the way back. It might gall him, but alone, he would probably be content to sit and wait for rescue, it would be safer and more certain, but Chekov needs help, his concern has only ratcheted since the boy raised not a syllable of protest over his deception. It’s a shame actually, he’d been mentally composing a “No Captain, don’t try and save me,” speech, delivered in a Russian accent of course.

 

They lead him into what is a jury-rigged torture chamber. Jim feels bile rise at the smell, and all too recognisable body parts littering the floor. But the room is small, not all of the guards can enter here. He backs away from them, to the side. His hands are open, supplicating, outstretched towards his captors, even as he backs further into the room. “No, nyet, please...”

 

The lead one, the one who spoke before, smiles wolfishly and gestures. He clearly thinks that in his panic to get away that Jim hasn’t realised he’s passed through the door. The heavy metal door slams shut with an ominous clang, leaving Jim alone with only two of the guards. He thanks his guardian angel that he hadn’t resisted being removed from the cell, his hands are unbound. “Now little cub,” begins the leader, advancing towards him, “you will tell us your Starfleet’s invasion plans.”

 

Jim takes another step backwards and is brought up short against a low metal table. “Please,” he whimpers again, not willing to waste anymore time trying to explain that there is no invasion. Briefly, like a flickering fire at the back of his mind, the thought comes to him that he feels guilty for portraying Chekov in this way; Chekov would never cower in this situation.

 

But the ploy works. The alien steps right up to him, clearly hoping to intimidate him by proximity and Jim straightens to his full height and explodes into action.

 

He thinks the brawl might have cracked a couple of his ribs and he’s definitely sprained something in his knee, but he’s standing, he has the key for the door and those two bastards aren’t getting up again. “Don’t pick on my crew fuckers,” he mutters under his breath, taking care to step on the fingers of both aliens as he divests them of their lasers and selects a couple of the more lethal looking tools on the walls.

 

When he opens the door, the gods smile again, because the heavily armed gabble have dispersed to rape of pillage or destroy more of the economy or something and only one sleepy looking guard stands by the door. “He break alre-?”

 

And he is quickly silenced by an expertly thrown, well, Jim’ll call it a knife for simplicity, it’s pointy and it works. In his opinion that’ll do.

 

He makes his way back to the room where they’re holding Chekov and, bursting inside, is relieved to find Chekov still there and still conscious; though his lack of interest is worrying. “Keyptin, you have returned. I thought-”

 

“It’s alright Pav, it’s OK. Look, I brought weapons.”

 

Chekov gives him a look which he is sure is meant to convey “Sometimes, I am a bit frightened of you Captain,” but really only says, “Dear God, I’m in pain.”

 

“It’s alright,” he says again, hoping that that’s not tears choking his voice because one, that will only scare Chekov and two, you can fail command training for not being able to keep your command image under pressure. Sometimes it’s hard to remember he’s already passed. “I need to go build us a barricade OK? Get your communicator out and open it, they’re bound to push through the static soon.”

 

The barricade is an elaborate construction built out of interlocked pieces of furniture that prove Jim is a goddamned master at Tetris. It blocks the door and it’s a semicircle so Jim can man it alone. He is not the least bit disappointed that he doesn’t get to finish it when Uhura finally succeeds in overcoming the interference and Scotty beams them up.

 

****

**3)** **Uhura**

**_Alien Customs_ **

****

The _Enterprise_ is the flag ship of the Federation and someone in Starfleet has finally realised that Jim is impulsive and irrational but, after two years and several fiascos, actually not a horrible diplomat. He also has Spock who was raised in an Ambassador’s household. For some reason these facts translate into a long series of first contacts and tricky negotiations. Tricky negotiations that don’t always come with a full breakdown of cultural norms.

 

When the leader of the other side’s diplomatic team tells him that they usually seal agreements of diplomatic alliances with intercourse Jim swears someone, somewhere, is laughing at him. They’ve met their fair share (more than that actually) of very powerful aliens claiming to be gods and they’ve pissed of most of them; maybe one is having their revenge.

 

Next to him, Uhura stills completely and Jim damns the urge that had made him keep their team as small and none threatening as possible and bring only himself, Uhura and a single security guard by the name of Ensign Valerie Fey who looks like a child’s drawing of a stick figure.

 

These aliens will probably snap either of them, no matter how strong and tough they may be. The Candecians have very few nerves on their skin and feel very little. It means they have very little concept of their own strength, even Jim had had to swallow his pride and see Bones for a pain relieving hypo when the leader had slapped him on the back after the resolution of one particularly sticky point.

 

“Why?” he asks, stalling for time.

 

The leader shrugs expansively. “It is tradition,” he says, and Jim takes a moment to consider that Uhura’s work with the Universal Translator over the past few days has rendered him totally comprehensible in speech, “in the past it was lucky if a child resulted from the union, it signified the alliance would last into times undreamt of.” His gaze lingers on the two women.

 

Jim feels Uhura tense even more, fuck. Spock will _kill_ him, for real this time, if he lets these aliens touch his girlfriend but if he gives them Valerie it’ll be so obvious he’s favouring his Alpha bridge crew and she’s only 19 and fucking _Catholic_ , she’s probably a virgin. He feels annoyed with himself, _again_ , for not bringing anyone else. It sounds racist even in his head, but he _knows_ Galia would enjoy a night like this; she’d probably save him a lot of trouble and offer too. So far neither of the women has. And that tells him more clearly than anything else how frightened they both must be because the _Enterprise_ is crewed with self sacrificing _morons_.

 

His internal monologue and attempts to form a diplomatic refusal break off as the alien continues, eyes now sweeping Jim’s form. “It was also considered a sign of good faith if the leader of the more powerful side was willing to offer himself for the pleasure of his new allies to cement their bond.”

 

Jim doesn’t swallow or flinch because he’s James Tiberius fucking Kirk and he’s a Starship Captain and he once had sex with an alien more like a porcupine than anything else to salvage a diplomatic problem and his dad had driven his ship into the fucking _Narada_ to save _his_ crew so he can do this. But it’s a close thing. Though he doesn’t object to being with male beings per se he hates bottoming, it’s just not in his nature. And despite what people seem to think, he’s had enough misguided sexual adventures in his colourful youth to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he doesn’t like it as rough as these aliens are going to be.

 

He smiles his best diplomacy smile and steps forward, “Well, like we’ve explained to you, we respect the traditions of our allied planets.”

 

It fucking hurts, but he does it and he smiles through the whole thing. He even manages to cum a couple of times when the alien tells him that it is required to show that he isn’t being forced.

 

He’s too proud to see Bones for a hypo, he doesn’t want this in his medical file, nor does he want Bones’ well meant teasing, so he grits his teeth as he sits in his chair. He does not however, turn away a very awkward looking Spock who shows up at his door in the evening and stutters out an apology from himself and Nyota and offers a mindmeld to help relieve the worst of the pain.

 

And he thoroughly enjoys the chocolates and Saurion Brandy that a furiously flushing Valerie Fey pushes into his hands one night in the all-but empty mess hall.    

****

**4)** **Scotty**

**_Admiral Archer’s Inspection_ **

****

Jim got Scotty as his chief engineer because, well, not to put too fine a point on it, because he saved earth and no one had refused him anything in the immediate aftermath of what Starfleet, now tactfully terms, the _Narada_ incident. Old Spock had helped him too by detailing in his calm and reasonable Vulcan tone how necessary Scotty had been in the whole debacle. And if no one refused Jim anything in the aftermath of the _Narada_ , they all but fell over themselves to give the surviving Vulcans anything anyone thought they might want.  Besides, if anyone had even thought about refusing them, they’d have had to deal with one very pissed off much decorated and now wounded war hero in Admiral Christopher Pike.

 

None of this means that Admiral Archer doesn’t still hate him.

 

It is of course, just the _Enterprise’s_ luck that Archer does their first inspection tour at the end of their second year. Jim’s annoyed about it actually, the man’s 157 years old and has probably requested this inspection either in an attempt to find something (re: anything) wrong with Engineering or to spite the whole ship by dropping dead on the bridge and causing them to be grounded while an inquiry is carried out.

 

He makes sure every corner of every Jeffries tube, never mind places the Admiral might actually see, is shining and makes Bones accompany them on the official tour. This is a good, nay great, backup plan. It’s also almost worth the bitching ( _I’m a doctor not a tour guide_ ) to have someone that speaks Jim’s language of eye-rolls and clenched fists behind the Admiral’s back and to watch Bones turn purple at the old man’s suggestions that Jim wanting his doctor to accompany them means they must be fucking because Admiral April was like that with his CMO and they’ve been married for 60 years.

 

Jim also takes the precaution of stashing Scotty out of sight. The sight of the evil-dog-murderer might just be the thing to push the old man into cardiac arrest and if Archer says anything uncomplimentary about Scotty’s engines who knows what the mad Scottish bastard will do.

 

This takes more planning than most people realise because Archer might be ridiculously old but he’s not senile, he’s bound to ask for Scotty since he’s the reason he dragged himself all the way out here. Jim’s original plan had been to schedule an EVA but those only take half the time of a usual inspection, never mind the dinner afterwards, and besides, why would they need one in dry dock. No Jim has to be sneakier than that and his plan, if he does say so, is genius itself.

 

He’d dropped by engineering the day before and waited for Scotty to drop something or clatter something down and then confined him to quarters for 24 hours for being carless with Starfleet equipment. It makes Spock raise both eyebrows, Bones tell him he’s crazy and it’ll never work and a small crowd of new Ensigns who only signed on at this stop look at him like he killed a puppy, but he and Scotty get it. Not only does it get Scotty out of Archer’s way and not only does Archer get to have a happy moment because the beagle-slayer is being punished (and hey, the guy’s a hero in his own right, he deserves some happiness) but it gives Scotty a day off to read his technical journals. It’s a win-win and anyone who thinks otherwise doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

 

**5)** **Bones**

**_The bitchy ex wife, the now-famous ex husband and the daughter_ **

****

Jim probably knows more about Jocelyn McCoy’s marriage to Leonard McCoy that anyone other than the pair involved. Bones doesn’t actually talk about that sort of thing much, but Jim’s not stupid, he can piece together little clues. And on three days of the year, their wedding anniversary, Jocelyn’s birthday and Joanna’s birthday, Bones allows himself to get crying drunk and for some reason, known only to the grumpy doctor, he allows Jim to see him that way.

 

So Jim knows about the high school romance that turned sour in the harsh light of the adult world. He knows how hard McCoy tried to make it work, even whilst burying himself deeper and deeper in his work because in a tiny little clinic in Georgia, people rarely died, so there, at least, he knew he was doing some good. He knows about Jocelyn’s string of affairs, each more pathetically hidden than the last and that, despite that, Bones was still the last man in town to know. He knows about the vicious divorce where Jocelyn used every string her rich daddy could pull to strip everything of importance away from Bones. He knows that she took his clinic, a good chunk of his self respect, his house that he had been so proud to pay for, the respect of his neighbours and that he wasn’t allowed to so much as visit his little girl. He suspects that this last was the one which made Bones cry himself to sleep those nights he thought Jim was too drunk to be disturbed by it when they roomed together at the Academy.

 

And he knows Bones. He knows that the man’s a crotchety bastard, but that he’ll do anything possible for his patients and more even than that for his friends. He knows Bones is stubborn, proud, loyal to a fault, a borderline alcoholic, determined, brave and brilliant. And even if he’ll never vocalise any of that too Bones because he’s not a ten year old girl, he knows that Bones is exactly the kind of person that when Jocelyn contacts him (and she does) because now he’s famous and the saviour of earth, that he’ll reject her outright, the way she rejected him and then spend the rest of his life regretting it because now he’ll never see his baby again.

 

Jim has no intention of letting that happen. He won’t let someone as sadistic and straight up _mean_ as Jocelyn McCoy win. Not again, not when Bones hadn’t been able to have anything even resembling a normal relationship until they were half way through their second year. And not when he can accurately describe and hell probably draw by now, every single one of the thirty six photos of Joanna that Bones has. They are Bones’ most precious possession, the thing he treasures above all others. Jim knows he’s privileged to have seen them.

 

So he takes matters into his own hands. He calls Pike, and a couple of the other high ups at Starfleet that he’s befriended over the years and sounds out his sources with a couple of the more reputable papers, and finally, finally, with victory already tasting sweet in his mouth, he comms Jocelyn McCoy.

 

“...Captain,” she simpers, recognising his face on screen. She can’t possibly not know that he’s Bones’ commanding officer, but he’s willing to play it her way for now.

 

For a few minutes, he jokes and flirts and let’s her believe that she’s calling her because he wanted to get to know her. It makes his blood boil that she thinks he would even consider hurting Bones like that. And when he can’t take it, or keep dodging her not-so-subtle come-ons, any longer, he drops his bombshell.

 

He calmly explains that since the _Narada_ incident, Bones has what amounts to his own fan club and some girls involved in hero worship like that can be pretty crazy. He uses it as a platform to show off his obscure historical knowledge and reminds her of when actor Robert Patterson was kidnapped and murdered by one of his fans in the late 2020s.

 

She flutters her eyelashes and says something about regretting letting him get away. “We were just so young, I did try and get back in contact recently but-”

 

Jim cuts her off. “So yeah, crazy fan girl stalkers for Leonard,” god it feels weird calling him that, he’s called Bones by his given name about six times and at least two were as a joke, “so it’d really suck for you if word was to leak to the press about your numerous affairs.”

 

She knows instantly what he means and whitens under her healthy tan.

 

Jim smiles thoughtfully, “You see, so far, Leonard has kept all mention of you out of the press. He’s using some fairly weighty powers at Starfleet to do it too, but he wants Joanna’s life to be as untainted as possible. Me? I have no such compunctions.  I have no problem with making you villain of the week in every news feed in the Federation. And if I did so, you might find that that Andorian politician you’re seducing at the moment might not be so interested in the bad press after all. And he is terribly wealthy isn’t he?”

 

Jocelyn’s face twisted into an unpleasant mask. It occurred to Jim that she and Bones must have had an idyllic relationship until they got married because if that was her usual angry face he couldn’t imagine Bones marrying someone who could look so evil. “What is it you want Captain?” She attempted a seductive smile, “I’m sure we can come to some arrangement.”

 

Jim snorted disdainfully, “Please, I would hardly have had to blackmail you if all I wanted was sex. You’ll drop your knickers for a pretty smile. And my pretty smile comes with a great deal of power.” She flushed an angry, humiliated red and Jim felt a surge of uncharitable victory remembering that same flush appearing on Bones’ face when he had looked up to realise that Jim had entered their room to hear him pleading with Jocelyn to at least be allowed to send Joanna a Christmas present one year.  “I’ve forwarded you some forms. They give Leonard access, unfettered, to his daughter when he’s on leave. You’ll sign them and drop them at Starfleet headquarters tomorrow so he can see her whilst we’re here.”

 

She scowled, but Jim had her trapped. “Yes Captain,” she said, and the frost in her words would have frozen tropical landscapes. “Thank you for calling.”

 

Jim punches the air for joy when he gets a comm. from Bones the next day, cancelling their plans to see every ancient ruin in Scotland with Scotty because he’s taking his little girl to Disneyland. He ignores the thanks at the bottom of the note. No one hurts his crew.

 

**6)** **Spock**

**_Vulcan Bullies_ **

****

Old Spock, Ambassador Spock, said that Jim and _his_ Spock were supposed to have this epic, self defining friendship, but honestly Jim didn’t feel it for at least the first year of the mission. Spock was just...well, he was an awful lot like a teacher Jim had once had who had hated him for his ability to do entirely his own thing during class and yet still have the right answers. Spock just seemed to be waiting for him to break a regulation or fuck up in some way; his dark, watchful eyes seemed desperate for it.

 

And he was so alien. Jim knows that Ambassador Spock’s Kirk was older when he was made Captain and maybe that’s something to do with it because Spock is just...different. He doesn’t react quite like you expect at times and he’s bewildered by the most simple of concepts. He’s awkward. And Jim’s 28 so ultimately, it’s just more fun to hang out with Bones or Sulu.

 

Eventually, he starts to trust Spock. He starts to trust that although he can count on the Vulcan to point out each and every regulation he breaks each and every time he does so, that Spock will never truly hold that against him until it endangers the ship or the crew. He trusts that Spock will always come for him when he gets himself into yet another improbably dangerous situation. He trusts that when he is not on the bridge that Spock is the person he can delegate his beautiful lady to.

 

After some months, they start playing chess. It’s awkward at first, stilted and with Spock’s useless social skills Jim is left to carry the conversation alone. He perseveres though, he’s not one to give up just because a situation is difficult and because he _knows_ that the most successful command teams are the ones where the Captain and XO had some relationship beyond the professional. Just look at Pike and Number One! She must be fifty if she’s a day, but she still functions as his wingman at Starfleet functions and they are still seamless in their interaction and in their execution of plans. And one day it just clicks.

 

Jim begins to realise how funny his first officer is, how brilliant and intelligent and Spock, for his part, begins to realise that Jim’s impossible plans are born of intuition and understanding of people, whatever race, not from a random mishmash of elements that fortune favours. And it turns out, Old Spock was right. They complete one another in a way Jim has never experienced before. It is wonderful and perfectly intoxicating.

 

As their friendship deepens they open up to one another a little. They don’t have intense heart to hearts because they’re not _girls_ and one of them is a Vulcan and the other one is Jim who doesn’t really do opening up to people (as Bones will testify), but Jim does get to know about Spock’s many and varied disagreements with Sarek, set aside out of loss when Amanda died before them. He knows, though Spock never says, how conflicted he is by the dual aspects of his heritage and he knows that Spock was bullied for it as a child.

 

Jim himself was never bullied. He was too quick, too funny, too good looking, but his heart aches with sympathy for his sensitive, gentle friend. Which is why, during a routine mission to ferry Vulcan scientists from one observation post to another, he totally loses the place when he hears them turning the conversation around to the inferiority of hybrids in the rec. room one night.

 

Sulu glances in dark eyed panic from the Vulcans to Jim but a younger ensign, clearly oblivious to the subtext taking place hastens to agree. Jim’s good at reading Vulcans by now, so he sees the minute glimmer of a smile on the scientists face as Spock almost flinches at being betrayed so by a member of his own crew, a member of his own department. Jim makes a mental note to have her transferred, there will be nothing but the best and brightest for his ship and that includes those who can pick up on the tensions in conversation.

 

As always, McCoy leaps to defend Spock, viciously chronicling the many deficiencies thoroughbreds are prone to, but he is swiftly logic-ked into annoyed incoherency by a well placed set of jibes.

 

“What do you think...Spock?” queries the tallest of the Vulcans, Stonn Jim abruptly remembers.

 

Jim is not about to see Spock forced to answer such a loaded question. Silently, he unfolds himself from the unCaptainly sprawl he had adopted in the bean bag chair in the corner and approaches with a sunny smile. “Gentlemen,” he sings, addressing the Vulcans. The crew recognise his ready-to-do-battle smirk and the light of determination mingled with fury in his eyes and draw back.

 

“Captain-” begins Spock uncertainly.

 

Jim waves him off, “Not right at this moment Commander, I have a matter of some...urgency...to discuss with our guests. If you’ll join me in my quarters?”

 

No one misses pause over the words urgency, least of all the Vulcans, and the girl shoots Spock a disgusted look as she passes. The message is all too clear, Spock needs a human to fight his battles for him, but Jim doesn’t care.

 

He leads the group into his quarters and subjects them to a blistering tirade that would make his CMO proud about not-pulling-that-crap-on-his-ship-and-his-officers.

 

“Captain,” the one called Stonn tries to interrupt eventually, “I can have you reprimanded for this behaviour.”

 

Kirk smiles dangerously, for a race of geniuses, some Vulcans can be really stupid. “You can,” he agrees pleasantly, calming his voice instantly, “Of course, feel free to lodge any petition you wish with the appropriate Federation and Starfleet bodies. “Of course, I can also have all of you charged with harassment of a Starfleet officer, even if you’re cleared that’s not something a logical Vulcan, like yourself, wants on your record is it? And did you know, it’s within regulations for the Captain of a Federation vessel to, at his discretion, maroon any beings aboard his ship who he feels are causing emotional disruption of an unacceptable degree on any planet passed, providing they are given the necessary survival equipment and said planet has a Starfleet post on it?” That’s true actually; he learned it from Spock after Delta Vega.

 

There is a loaded silence. “I do not believe you will maroon us. If we do not reach the outpost to which we are headed in the next three solar days the phenomena we are to study will have dissipated.”

 

Jim smiles his most dangerous smile, the one that makes armed Kingons re-evaluate their options. “I’m James T, Kirk, I’m reckless and irresponsible and half of Starfleet’s brass thinks I shouldn’t be allowed to wear this uniform, much less Captain the flagship. Do you really want to test how far I am willing to go?”

 

Another long silence ensues. Jim plays chess with Spock and counts the Vulcan his best friend. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t fidget and doesn’t break eye contact. He just stands with his arms folded and waits.

 

“Your displeasure is noted Captain.”

 

Jim knows that’s the closest to an apology he’s going to get. “Thank you. I won’t make you apologise to Spock, only because it is against _his_ culture, apologies being illogical. But you will be civil at any time you are in his presence or I _will_ take this further.” He has practice in making a Vulcan back down through the steel in his command voice and he takes pleasure in the capitulation he sees in Stonn’s eyes. “Do you understand me?”

 

“Quite clearly Captain.”

 

The tone is level, the face impassive but Jim can read the hatred as clearly as a child’s big print book. He has made an enemy here today. He can’t bring himself to care. “Dismissed,” he says instead.   

****

**+1) The Crew**

**_The Press_ **

****

One of the things very few people know about Captain James Tiberius Kirk is that he hates talking to the media. Most people assume that such an attention seeking drama queen as Jim must love getting the attention of the press. His bridge crew know better.

 

They know how it bothers him that the media twist him into a hero after a mission that caused the death of one of his men. How he hates it when facts are skewed to fill their perception of a good story. They know that he despises it when the heroism of his people is left untold or glossed over because they weren’t photogenic. They know that he hates being interrupted on his shore leave, the few times free of responsibility he has, by over-zealous reporters with probing questions that open old wounds.

 

They can’t even remember how they found out. Sulu knows that he vents just a little too much plasma at every station docking they make. Just enough that the area must be cleared for a few moments and so that there is no ring of microphones, flashing cameras and shouting questions when the senior crew disembark. Chekov uses his bouncing youthful enthusiasm and boyish good looks and indecipherable accent to attract attention onto himself and away from the Captain when they are eventually caught up with outside whichever hotel they are staying in. Uhura knows that she fields their calls, fobs of their questions, sends sanitised, Starfleet, re-written press releases and encrypts transmission holding the Captain’s whereabouts like they hold the secret to making dilethium. McCoy sees them off with scathing southern invectives that could get him court-marshalled or seriously reprimanded if anyone ever thought to report him for it. Spock knows that he stretches the regulations involving a first officer’s duties and takes it upon himself to meet with the press with his cold, unflappable Vulcan mask, or to at least stand by Jim’s side and offer his silent, immovable support on those occasions when Jim must face them.

 

And Jim seems not to even notice. He never tells them it’s OK, he can manage. He never shoots them half grateful, half exasperated glares and smiles.

 

But that’s OK too, because even when Jim’s not protecting them with his life, his blood and everything he is, they know he will. They know, the whole crew, know that he would. And it is their privilege to reciprocate.  


End file.
